Heroics
by Liquidsilk
Summary: Set preBefore Crisis. Every Turk has to start somewhere, but with enemies like AVALANCHE, mistakes have a high price to pay. Reno and Rude, but not RenoxRude except by a negligible bit of inference. Updated and generally made better as of July 27th 2006.
1. The Day we First Met

Disclaimer; I don't own anything in Final Fantasy 7 or Before Crisis, and all characters – apart from Lorraine, Helena and Divine, are not mine.

-- I was trying to find out when Before Crisis was coming out in Europe one day, and came across this snippet of information concerning Rude at the start of Before Crisis: "this top member of the Turks is an introvert who doesn't seem to get along with Reno at first, though this changes over time" andI just thought; what could have happened to have made them like each other over such a relatively short space of time? Et voila.

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Chapter One; The day we first met

The figure was waiting for him as he stepped off the platform. Smoke from the dilapidated engine curled around it; stock still, its clothes and hair, even its form itself, rippled fluidly in the half-light. Rude swallowed and stepped forward through the shrouds. The man who coolly confronted him was only slightly shorter than himself; and this was impressive for any normal human being. He stood passively, arms behind his back, black hair sleekly outliningthe sharp lines of his navy suit; a total nonentity in the crowded mess of noise and colour that surrounded them. The black hole, as usual,waited for him to speak. He was bad at starting conversations to begin with, without this intimidating figure to hinder him.

'I hope no-one died while I was away.'

The man paused, for a sick second Rude thought he somehow had the wrong person. Then he nodded, and gestured with an immaculate finger for Rude to follow him to a sleek black car that was waiting, pouring thin grey smoke into the crowded square outside the station. He sat uncomfortably beside Tseng in the dark interior of the car, his reflection cast darkly a thousand times by the polished wood veneer. He jumped when the older man tapped a finger on the glass divider in front of him. The driver gestured silently that he could hear.

'We have one more stop to make. The sector seven railway station, please.' The voice was level, controlled, as silky as the raven hair crushed against the sable headrest. It had a natural grace that, it seemed to him, could turn to cruel, sharp words with perfect ease.

The dark car sped on through the smoky streets, moving through the battered vans and equally as silky estate cars like a shark gliding through so much tuna, turning the Station St. corner without braking and swerved right across the roundabout to avoid a half-wrecked car travelling at a terminal pace. Tseng stepped out of the car almost before it had come to a halt on the pitted pavement of the railway station, and beckoned again for Rude to follow him. He carefully placed his suitcase next to the dividing 'wall' created by the driver's seat, and clambered out of the car.

They waited for roughly five minutes. The Turks were always on time, but the trains, it seemed, operated on no such agenda. When the train finally pulled lazily into the station, Rude wondered who the next recruit was to be. He was sure now, although Tseng hadn't deigned to tell him, that someone had indeed died. Or the powers that be had decided to boost theri numbers.After all, heknew from experiencethat Turks were 'recruited' from all over the world, and the rails were the only way to get this far into the city. Braving the streets with even one bag, let alone the plethora of luggage that most travellers carried was a guaranteed one-way ticket to the mortuary.

Tseng stood up suddenly, Rude followed suit, although hesincerely hated being part of the welcome committee.

The figure that eventually appeared, looking decidedly uncomfortable in the press of people, was the exact opposite of what he had been expecting. All of the Turks he had seen thus far in his stay in the city were smart, well turned-out citizens, and certainly at least respectable in appearance. In fact, the complete polar opposite of the _kid_ he saw before him. He was shorter than himself by about a head, and said head was covered in bright, bedraggled red hair. His clothes; a black shirt and what were probably jeans; although they were so faded and dishevelled that he couldn't really tell, were crumpled around the boy's wiry form. The dark clothes and strange hair contrasted his face in a way that was both startling and uncomfortably fascinating. It reminded Rude of a lizard he had once seen sitting in the shade of a rock, exposed to Mako energy from the nearby reactor, and its eyes glowed as it lay in a curiously human fashion, paws crossed in the dirt.

This boy – this…youth, generated the same air of confident laziness, his half-closed aquamarine eyes shining brightly, framed by two unexplained crescent marks on his high cheekbones. His thin, flat nose seemed to curve in a childish manner, and his lips were bowed, making his mouth too small for someone over the age of fiteen. He looked Wutaian, severely so, and at the same time, the unusual features had come together to create a face that was, while surprisingly uninterested and wistful-looking,aggravatingly striking. In comparison to Rude's solid, thick-jawed and tanned features, the boy looked decidedly juvenile. Rude shook himself mentally; the boy looked strange, too frail and too young to make a good Turk, nothing more to it.

In the relative gloom of the station, his pale skin shone, picking him out from the crowd with unerring accuracy. Surely this couldn't be the new man? Perhaps it was the burlychap behind him, or the respectable-looking girl searching the platform beside him? No. The youth - boy, rather, Rude decided he couldn't be more than sixteen- spotted Tseng and meandered over to him with a careless step. Without waiting, the boy shouldered the small bag he had been dangling from his thin, long fingers; spoke to the waiting Tseng;

'Turks, right?'

Tseng nodded in affirmation. The boy turned to Rude and gave him a snake-like grin. He felt his lip twitch up almost involuntarily, but something irked him about his manner, it was too affectedly casual, as if he had something to prove by being dishevelled and suave.

During the ride back to the Shinra building, Tseng sat in the front, Rude tried to take up as little space as possible in a corner of the expansive back seat, and the other boy sat in a contained sprawl in the opposite corner, his face turned to the speeding lights of the city flashing past. He sighed and turned to face the seat in front of him.

'Where're you from, then?' he queried, not bothering to face the surprised Rude. He paused, wondering whether the question was directed at the invisible Tseng. After an uncomfortable pause, he decided not. 'Around.' His voice abrupt, realising the kid thought he was a recruit too, despite that fact that he was wearing the damn suit.He hesitated again, wondering whether it would be correct to return the query. He decided that he didn't care enough to try. He didn't want to know. The boy laughed softly, the quietest sound he had heard from him thus far. 'Lucky old you, I'm from down there.' He said, smiling, one long finger pointing down pressed against the slick glass at the floor of the assumed he meant the slums. As if "around" didn't mean the slums; how unobservant could one person be. He rested his head on his hand and raised his eyebrows shortly to show that he'd heard. The boy laughed again, he could feel the bright mirrors of his eyes on him in the dark. But neither of them had anything more to say.

The car coasted to a halt at the back end of the Shinra building, outside gleaming double doors bearing the legend: 'Halls Of Residence'. This, it seemed to Rude,was where newcomers to both the city and the Turks stayed, hopefully until they could find somewhere else to live.

They followed Tseng through an expansive atrium and into a smaller joining space. A cork board holding tarnished and numbered hooks from which dangled sets of brass keys hung on one panelled wall. Tseng lifted two up, holding them with the tips of his slender fingers as if keen not to touch them. He handed the boya key tagged with a red key chain on which were printed in white the number 63. With the words;

'34th floor. Wake-up call is 6 o'clock. Show him up, Rude.'

He turned and entered one of the double sets of lifts in a corner of the grand room. Rude sighed and folded his arms.His plans for tonight had involved warming up his empty flat and trying to sleep, not babysitting.The lift returned to the ground floor once again. He lookedwith mild annoyanceat the other, who was appraising his situation blankly. He saw the other's gaze fall on the stairs. He turned his startling eyes upwards to Rude.

'Race ya up.' It was a barely audible challenge. Rude almost laughed, it seemed so childish in such a backdrop as this. He settled for pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and shooting the amicably taunting figure a withering look from behind their safe mirrors.This cocksure kid obviously just wanted to make fun of him, and he didn't like games. The too-small mouth grinned, said brightly that it was his loss and dissapeared in a blur of red and black and white that spun up the stairs. Rude frowned, and started as the boy turned around halfway up the staircase and actually shouted at him.

'It's Reno, by the way.'

Not for the first time that day, Rude was nonplussed, aggravated.

'What?'

'You never asked me my name. It's Reno.AndI already know yours.'

The boy named Reno left him standing in the middle of the over-polished floor, with the growing feeling that he ought to give it a few scuffs for good measure. Now the boy was beginning to annoy him. He sighed, and lay back on the bed, his feet dangling over the edge. With more than a little sarcasm, he muttered;

'Reno, I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.'


	2. The Way we are Now

Chapter Two; The way we are now

The Turks hot-footed it down the narrow street, skidding round a corner, Reno had just reached the uneven staircase when he remembered something that made him stop short.

'The computer drive! It's still back there!'

Rude slapped a hand against his shaven head in a gesture that was worse than any swearword. Reno ducked behind a concrete pillar to avoid a hail of bullets that peppered the pavement with a patina of scratches. He checked his gun and cast a grin in Rude's direction and shouted over the explosions;

'I've still got some juice left in this thing! You phone Tseng and get the car running, I'll go get the drive!'

'What!' Rude shouted after Reno's retreating back, but he had already turned a corner into the gathering darkness. He hesitated, not sure whether to run after his partner, but shook his head and dashed down the lengthy flight of stairs, flipping his black phone open as he ran.

Reno turned sideways to peer around a column and smiled his slow lazy smile, the gleam of a professional who enjoys his job too much forming in his hooded eyes.

Kicking off from the crumbling brick wall, he launched himself across the street, pulling his arm up and furiously smashing down on the trigger of his materia-powered gun. A stream of glowing bullets found their mark in the shadowy attackers, tearing unseen bodies to ribbons. He turned in mid-air and landed feet-first, straightening against the opposite wall from where he had came from. Wasting no time, he whirled round and cleared the distance through the attackers' rundown compound with his boneless run.

Fuhito looked up, pushing his glasses up his small nose, he cocked an eyebrow at the taller man observing the battle through a paneless window. Gathering up the papers discarded by Elfe a few minutes previously, he left the room silently. Crossing the corridor to stow away the plans in a safer place, he stopped short. Casting his mind back a few moments, he suddenly recalled the gunfire that had been so raucously rending the usual silence, and was half relieved and half worried to see that they were now silent. To his calculating mind, this warranted two possible outcomes; either the infiltrators had been justly dealt with, which he doubted, or those annoying Turks had annihilated their troops with commendable speed. Through the process of deductive reasoning, he decided that Sears would have to deal with the returning Turks that he felt sure were now in the building.

Having calmly explained the situation to both Sears and Elfe, who had appeared apparently from nowhere when the subject was brought up, she had volunteered to go after the Turks, and Sears had gone to gather his remaining dispensable weapons. Fuhito returned to his room, and waited for his comrades' inevitable return. He felt little remorse about it; he had seen those two Turks around this neighbourhood before, and they seemed to be as well adjusted as any murdering lowlifes could be. When he was still studying at Midgar UU; a scholarship for a double major in Applied Science and Physical Processes, he had seen them in the bar he was working in to pay his reduced fees. Younger, of course, but not noticeably so; the little skinny one seemed to be stuck at age 19, and that hulking great bouncer type was ageless. They must have been newly recruited back then, and while no physical change had taken place, some increase in skill must surely have occurred.

He sighed and dumped the papers he had been still holding on his desk. They dislodged a sheaf of Elfe's earlier ideas for the safe annihilation of the Mako reactors; a plan that they agreed would bring Shinra down for good. Fuhito bore no ill will towards most of the Turks; unlike the others, he recognised that they were true professionals, they did what they were told and expected nothing less than due payment for it. And they tipped well in bars and didn't bother the regulars.

He tucked the scribbled sketches back into their box and silently glided over to the shuttered window. Opening the blinds slowly, so as not to attract attention from any troublemakers that were out on this clear and cold night, he peered through the pale starlight and would have stifled a cry, if he were stupid enough to make one in the first place. The redheaded, pale, skinny frame of the eternally 19-year-old Turk stood, quickly deciphering his carefully assembled locks that protected the computer drive; that essential piece of coding equipment that siphoned Mako from Shinra itself to the main power source for their compound. As he watched, the last code was shuffled into place by nimble fingers, and a sticklike arm grabbed the cylinder of metal inside. Tucking the small power-pack into his navy jacket, the boy turned and, smiling, started off in the direction he had come. Fuhito felt strangely unmoved. Subconsciously, a part of him knew that Sears and Elfe would soon catch up with the miscreant, and another chided him for having so much faith in others. However, his suppositions were rewarded. He saw the figure return, walking slowly backwards. On the other end of whatever was holding him up, was the thin sword of Elfe and Sears' gun.

Then, with what he noted with a certain detachment was an unusual agility for any human being, the redhead pulled a long-barrelled mako gun from his belt. Leaping over Elfe's calculated sword thrust, he swung the black barrel to aim at her head, an expression halfway between anger and joy crossing his aquiline features. Fuhito felt a jolt of alarm; she had yet to recover balance from her earlier miss, and the Turks were not known as bad marksmen. Almost in slow motion, he gripped the windowsill as the boy pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

The light of the materia lodged in the release mechanism of the gun flickered and died. The Turk lowered his arm and stared at his useless weapon for just a moment too long. Sears raised his arm and fired. He shot to kill, Fuhito knew, but he did not underestimate the Turk. The boy realised just as the trigger clicked, and threw himself sideways. As he landed, a delayed splash of blood stained his jacket at the shoulder, creating a spreading black stain over the crumpled navy. Sears slid over to the fallen figure, his broad-jointed thumb pulling back on the release system of his well-worn handgun.

Levering himself up on a thin elbow, the Turk shot a stick-thin leg upwards at Sears' hand, knocking the slim firearm from his thick fingers. Picking himself up like a spider unfolding he set off at a desperate pace, one arm hanging useless at his moving side, frozen fingers still clutching the equally useless gun. The others followed suit, Sears' calm one-shot reverie broken as he ducked to snatch the pistol from the dusty cobbles and fired volleys at the retreating Turk, too angry to even aim. Fuhito was mildly amused to see some hit their mark; he had never seen anyhting wrong with a little light sadism as far a 'enemies' were concerned. He counted as they ran past his field of vision. One, shoulder. Two, the elbow of the same arm. Three, clipping his skull, drawing a pin-line of blood. Four, a spinning shot that knocked the gun almost out of his hand. Five, six, seven, clipping his limbs, opening jagged tears in his suit. Eight, smack on target in the right hand, warranting a surprisingly minimal response from its owner. Nine - Fuhito moved into the adjacent room just in time to see the boy had cleared a truck parked in the middle of the street in two strides, fetching him a quick shot that buried itself somewhere below his ribs and drew a cry that was audible from the window. He disappeared behind the truck's flat wheels and appeared again, half-running, half-stumbling around the corner leading to the steps, and his only exit.

Fuhito shrugged and turned back to his room. If the Turk made it to whatever transportation he had waiting; and he was doubtful that he had returned without backup, then they would probably get away. If not, then Shinra had lost the upper hand. Either way, things would hardly change.


	3. Mission Complete

Chapter Three; Mission complete

Rude closed the phone and turned the open-topped car's ignition on. It was a very old car, only a double-seater, useless but for the remarkably robust bodywork, and with a rollcage and a very accommodating trunk. He drummed his gloved fingers on the steering wheel and tried to suppress the knot of uncertainty he felt in his stomach. It was just that he didn't really trust Reno yet, but they _were_ Turks now, after all, and Reno would never have let him come with him anyway. Still…he was worried. He didn't want to lose a friend. And he didn't want to have to repeat that hackneyed phrase to himself again.

Shots rang out from around the corner. He gripped the steering wheel and instinctively reached for his own little-used gun. Reno appeared round the corner. Rude felt his heart lurch, an emotion which alarmed him, to say the least, but the sight was alarming. Barely keeping a reasonable distance from his pursuers, Reno gathered himself up for a leap, still running. Rude relaxed slightly; Reno was the master of acrobatics, he could handle a jump from there straight to the car. They were going to be okay.

Sears collected himself as he saw the Turk ready himself for what he judged to be a jump down the flight of steps. He smiled beatifically and took aim.

Reno's right foot left the ground, briefly shifting all of his miniscule weight onto his left.

Sears squeezed the trigger.

Ten.

The shot ripped through Reno's earthbound leg. The sound and the result were almost indescribable. With a noise that was somewhere between a snap and a thud, the leg gave way. Rude saw Reno's expression change from desperation to pain, and then to downright fear, as he realised what was going to happen. He guessed that the same expression was plastered across his normally immobile face.

It seemed to happen in slow-motion. Reno left the ground as he had meant to, but he had none of the spring that could have carried him cleanly down to the pavement. He landed a few steps down, and bounced. Not dramatically, not in the manner that the spectacularly-murdered politician is thrown down his marble staircase in bone-shattering, skin-breaking jolts by a team of hired killers in all the terrible films Midgar had to offer.

He simply landed on his front, one arm crooked in a futile attempt to protect the rest of him, and rolled, the cracked and cement-patched steps making him rattle almost comically in his descent, were it not for the steady stain of red that each jolt left on the fractured stone. Rude caught him by his collar before he had reached the bottom of the steps. Reno looked up, dazed, from behind the black-gloved hand.

'Got it.' He choked.

Rude pulled his gun out of its holster and looked up for the assailants. His eyes narrowed behind their sunglasses as he saw the leader of AVALANCHE gazing, unmoved, down at him.

Sears frowned, appraising the shot. Rude shouted at him to go back – in rather more graphic terms. The revolutionary snarled and levelled his gun at Rude, who in turn fired a resounding shot into the darkening sky, raising a clarion-rattle form the web of scaffolding that laced the rooftops of the alley. Elfe smiled and turned, brushing Sears' sleeve. He nodded and turned back into the darkness.

Rude turned back to his fellow Turk, bemused in his own emotionless way at his enemies' actions, only to find that he had dragged himself up into the passenger seat of the big black car. His head was leaned back against the low headrest of the seat, a vermillion stain dripping from his forehead down his somehow paler face. His eyes, barely open, flicked to the taller man. Rude jumped back into the driver's seat and set the already-started car rolling at a desperate pace down the winding road.

He wondered if he could say anything. Usually so silent, he found it hard to think of anything that wasn't obviously stupid. So, 'are you okay' was out of the window, for a start. It had happened before, he had to remind himself, getting one's head kicked in was a hazard of the job…he shouldn't feel scared…he had dealt with this a thousand times, even in the short time he had been with the Turks, and been dealt with for the same reason just as many times. He'd just…never seen his partner fail that badly before. Or maybe that should be 'fail that well before'.

He felt he had to say something, just to know he was still alive; the evidence of his eyes wasn't enough. Reno mumbled something. Perhaps to ask where they were going, but that should have been obvious, even in his state.

Rude felt something slump against his shoulder. Not wanting to take his eyes off the road, not wanting to panic, not being able to stop himself form doing just that, he pulled the car over onto a deserted pavement, making the wheels scream in protest at the sharp turn. Now he just felt angry. Bloody AVALANCHE. Bloody Reno had to go and get himself bloody well shot. He didn't want to deal with this.

His thoughts fumed and whimpered alternately, but outwardly he was calm, as always. Allowing himself a frown, he pushed the boy back into his seat, his slanted eyes flickering open and shut behind shuddering rice-paper eyelids. Still alive. But his crumpled shirt was developing an ungainly patina of spreading crimson now.

Rude jerked the car back into first gear and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The stench of melted rubber lingered in the air behind the car, mingling with the heat haze from the engine made Rude felt suddenly ill. Or maybe he was just frightened. Taking a hairpin bend on two protesting wheels, the car shuddered to a steaming halt outside the municipal hospital. Pocketing the keys he scooped Reno up in his arms, really not caring at this point how ridiculous he looked; like some kind of strange hero in a fairytale, not caring about having to carry a fully-grown man like some kind of child, not caring about all the sodding rumours that had hounded the Turks for as long as he had been one. Literally.

He shouldered the doors open, ignored the staring eyes of the three secretaries seated at their post behind the expansive counter, and ran down the familiar network of gleaming halls. His heart pounding, but not yet out of breath, he rapped loudly on a door holding a gold-plated sign bearing the name 'Dr. Lorraine'. He waited for a few excruciating seconds, his blood hammering in his ears; deafening him. The door was opened by a small, freckled woman with wavy auburn hair tumbling from its loose ponytail to rest on her white lab-coat. She seemed startled at first, and then her grey eyes widened as she took stock of the state of the pair, Rude's normally impeccable suit dusty and crumpled from the break-neck journey, his sleeves stained dark from the stick-figure being held by them. Rude spoke breathlessly,

'I'd like to call in a favour, doctor.'

Doctor Lorraine nodded. This hospital was a central guard shift for the Turks, and Rude had helped the staff out of many tight spots concerning the city's less honourable denizens.

She turned back to her room, grabbed her phone and punched a speed-dial button. She exchanged a few urgent words with whoever was on the other end, and flipped the phone shut. Taking off her coat hurriedly, she turned to Rude for the second time.

' Helen and Divine will be here shortly. We'll take him to emergency surgery. Don't worry, Rude.'

The stretcher arrived in under a minute, a commendable time, even to help a Turk. The doctors' assistants strapped Reno to the flat, rickety trolley and careered off down the long white corridor.


	4. The Way we were Then

Chapter Four; The way we were then

Doctors Amanda Lorraine, Enoch Helena and Nathaniel Divine sat in a rough triangle around a circular table in the break room. Cold, damp air curled from steel grates in the rough walls, twisting invisible fingers to liquid visibilitythrough the steam rising from three mismatched mugs.Lorraine stared into her black coffee and sighed, the swell of her cheek reflected to impossible smoothness in the rippled stuff. Helena clicked the plastic spoon he was using to stir his tea down on the table and spoke;

'I'd never seen _him_ on the rounds before. I didn't know he and Rude worked together.'

Divine shrugged his slender shoulders and took a gulp of whatever it was he was drinking, given his reputation, it was likely to be able to burn a sizeable hole in the tabletop. His elbows rested together on the scuffed plastic coating of the table, unnaturally white coat sleeves folded and pooled around the joints of his bent arms, his overly-long fingers curled around the grey-green mug to lift it to his aquiline face, giving him the air of an unusually languid young child drinking from a cup too big for them.

'Think he was new?' Lorraine warmed her hands on the scratched white mug and stole a glance at the expressionless faces of her colleagues. For the first time since he had given curt orders in the operating theatre, Divine spoke in a measured tone;

'Probably. Hard to tell, really, with people like them.'

Helena rested his stubbled chin in his hand, brown eyes carefully avoiding the blank tired stares of his compatriots as he spoke, darkly flicking from the middle-distance to Divine's face that twisted into a not unpleasant sneer, under half-closed lids.

' You don't think they're…you know…that the rumours are true, do you?' Divine grimaced;

'With the number of enemies Shinra has, and the Turks being such a closely-knit group, do you not think that some malicious rumours would have sprung up?'

Helena shrugged dismissively, apparently satisfied.

'Suppose it's none of our business, really.' He paused and searched for a new subject.'He seemed young, anyway. If he wasn't a new recruit, then they're taking 'em on way too soon.' He glanced at Divine, who waved his hand uncertainly;

'Looks are deceiving. He wouldn't have been breaking any child labor laws. Still," Divine's shoulders startled shortly with a short laugh'he's just young enough to die, I suppose.'

Lorraine remained still, not sure in her half-dazed torpor what Divine had meant to prove by this last. Her eyes were darkened by the shade of her eyelids as they stared down into the darker pool of her drink. She ran her tongue under the sharp tips of her front teeth to taste the bitter after-taste of the stuff before she spoke.

'I suppose we shouldn't worry. It's lucky we still have blood donors in this city, otherwise we'd have been in trouble.' The doctors nodded contemplatively.

Rude leant against the white-plastered wall of the tiny single room and looked. He could hardly take his eyes off the still form in the bed. It was plastered with so much white gauze that very little of its skin could be seen. Thegreyish sheets, coarse fibres visible even in the gloom cast by the shuttered windows, were turned down with iron rigidity to reveal slivers of ice-white, translucent skin between the whiter strips of bandages, soft shadows under protruding ribs shifting and becoming sharper with shallow breaths. Arms with little of the saving grace of muscle dissapeared below the rough sheets, a long blue vein stood out from the inside ofone stringy limb, a motorway map-line connecting his hand and his heart. His passive face overshadowed by a long bandage covering his forehead, a fitting substitute for goggles, given the circumstances, Rude thought, and wrapped around his skull.

Rude pulled a plastic chair from its resting-place beside the bank of machienery, grimacing as it screeched against the smooth linoleum floor. His shoes had left slight rippled marks on the floor, he noticed,sitting as close as her dared to the bed, watching the monitor count out the meagre shift and pitch of blood that let his friend live, in stark greenish jolts. He rested his elbows on his knees. He had nothing to do until Tseng arrived. He knew thathe should have been doing something, anything, reporting back to Shinra, perhaps. Or maybe just going on a pub crawl. Something to take his mind of things. _Things _shouldn't really have been on his mind, anyway; he was only here because he felt the unfamilliar empty burn of guilt nagging at him. If Tseng had deigned to replace Reno just for this one mission, he wouldn't have to be here. Tseng was too elevated to run the rounds with the likes of him though, he seemed to be stuck with picking up Reno's pieces for the forseeable future. And Reno broke so very easily.

Reno was marble, Tseng was steel. Reno cracked, Reno got angry, Reno failed. Tseng never fractured, Tseng never let on what he felt or thought, if anything, Tseng was unbreakable. Reno, with his flashes of childish joy and nights of drinking and rages as unpredictable as summer lightning. Tseng, with his contemptuous glares and his too-thin praise and his addiction to duty. Marble could never beat steel. Not really. It would be a perfunctory victory, one that would crack marble more than it dented steel.

He dragged his thoughts back to Tseng. Perhaps it had been that fight…no, it had been earlier than that, maybe a day or so after they had joined. He hardly knew Reno, but he was wary of him, in his own silent way, he recognised that there was something unnacountably off about him, something that made him almost beleive the swarm of rumours that followed the boy's every movement. He was ashamed to say that he had looked down on him; despite the relatively amiable nature of their first encounters, he certainly would have laughed if he was told that skinny little sarcasm machine would be leading him into battle in just a few short months. If he thought about it, he really, truly hadn't liked him. He was too loud, too brash, too forward. And too foolish.

Tseng, Tseng. He had to clear his thoughts before he got here. Yes, just afterthe kid hadjoined, Tseng had tested the newest wave of recruitsfor no apparant reason. They were reluctant, to say the least; Tseng had achieved a small cult following, even then, even when he was still looked down on by the various executives of Shinra, the company's nefarious exploits were inevitably linked back to Verd, and to a lesser extent Tseng, in the public eye. the sheer weight of rumours that surrounded him were far more imposing than he himself. One by one, they had been called up, and one by one they had found themselves with the rough matting of the platform against their backs. He remembered wondering why this display of empty movement required his presence; the indea of the exercise was alien to him, pointless to publically beat down every single initiate in turn. Perhaps it had some psychological value. He had remained silent as he returned to his position beside the slouching redhead, careful to make his face blank.

Rude rested his chin in his hand, briefly pulled out of his reverie. He remembered the next few minutes still, and he was still ashamed of the twinge of jealousy that he had felt at the time.

Reno had been called up, the langour in his eyes that had seemed aggravatingly affected to Rude giving way to an effervescent resolution when Tseng spoke. He'd strode on to the platform raised in the centre of the airy room, and, grinning like a madman below eyes crooked with viciously childish mirth, stood in a loose-limbed, straight-backed stance that Rude had never seen before. It had made Tseng angry. Rude, for all his impervious demeanour, knew hidden emotions when he…didn't see them…for all of Tseng's black hole being, he could see that this child didn't know what was about to happen to him. He'd frowned. Tseng had bowed curtly. Reno's smile had faded to a merely snake-like appearance. It had seemed to go on for hours, Tseng impassively reaching out in offence, Reno evading him with what Rude had noticed was mounting effort and anger. Marble never attacked; steel never gave him a chance. Finally Reno's frustration had seemed to overcome his rational thoughts, and he'd struck out with a wild jab of the leg. Tseng ihad mmediately caught his foot mid-air and spun him around, crushing him to the matted floor with a cold, expressionless flick of the wrist. Reno had lain there for a time, the breath knocked out of him. Rude had watched, his eyes flicking nervously between the two masks; one a calm teacher's, the other barely concealing a vicious pain and anger. Surely, the thought had briefly drifed across his mind, the boy hadn't expected to win. He'd considered the arrogance of this, and his sense of dislike had deepened then and there. Tseng had offered him a hand. Reno'dflipped himself to his feet. Tseng had spoken a few inaudible words as the other moved past him. The redhead hadstopped, turned his head a fraction, and spat a word back, eyebrows furrowed. Tseng had smiled.

Rude's head twitched to one side, damp impression made by his bare palm stinging cold in the chilled air. No, that wasn't the time. It had been the night after that. He hadn't even tried to go back to his flat, feeling strangely awake even at the unholy hour that had brought the flush of morning behind half-hidden stars to the sky as he had crept down to the gym, reasoning that if he couldn't sleep, he might as well make the most of his consciousness. He had been about to push the double doors open when what he liked to think of as incipient instinct for not getting killed made him stop and listen. He'd sighed inwardly as he heard faint sounds coming from inside the hall. Either one of his colleagues was having an illicit liaison with the cheaper denizens of Midgar, or someone other than him was suffering from insomnia. At that time, before he'd stopped caring about people altogether, he'd abhorred training in front of others. Although he was, had been rather,one of the hundred and eight students, he had duly noted that the other recruits were fast, moving with a skill learned from martial arts, rather than fist-fighting. But, he conceded, even if he couldn't climb walls or jump eight feet into the air, he didn't need a weapon. The others had seemed as though they couldn't fight properly without a firearm. As if they needed its reassurance when and if things went wrong. He had shrugged and pushed open the door, fervently hoping primarily that it would be one person inside, and that it wouldn't be anyone he hated.A blinding flash of light had made him stagger back, made him think for a split-second that anyone else who was awake would be sure to gravitate to him now. No chance of a quiet run or something tonight. He'd checked himself perfunctorily, calmly; no damage, so whatever that had been, it wasn't immediately dangerous, or was at least a bad enough shot not to be. He'd crept forward as stealthily as he could, shoes tapping on the wooden floor despite his efforts to soften his steps. He hadpeered tentatively around a stack of chairs and saw…a figure. Crouched in the middle of the floor, crumpled in on itself like a dead spider. Strange, pale thing cast in a half-silhouette by the slatted blind on the long windows. It was too dark to determine what the nature of the apparition was, and he reallyhadn't wanted to investigate. Just as he was about to move to the multi-junction lightswitch at the opposite end of the room, the thing spoke, said something half-curse half-complaint.It had been a human voice. A voice he had recognised with a lurch of memory that had made him want to turn around and leave in a hurry. It spoke again.

'Man, gotta stop trying so hard. 'Kay…let's think…'

The had thing moved its scarecrow limbs, whirling what appeared to be a glorified stick off its shoulder to rest in front of it. It had moved its left arm in an elbow-less motion and clicked its outstretched finders.

'_Turk light!'_

It was little more than a whisper, but the voice carried a commanding burst of light that crackled down the rod and burst, fizzing and sparking, in jagged tendrils of flame. Rude winced as they earthed themselves on a nearby punchbag. A flashy little spell, pointlesslyextravagant in motion with little real effect. Thunder without lightning. Exactly what he'd expected.

'Better.'

The figure sighed and grasped both ends of the stick.

'Much better.'

A new voice this time. From the shadows at the back of the expansive hall. Both Rude and the other had jumped at the sudden interruption.

'You just can't train without destroying something, can you kid?'

The youth had straightened. Tensed. Rude had sworn in his mind.

'First, I hardly see how that concerns you. Second, why are you down here?'

Tseng had shaken his head. His voice had carried a mild amusement, a not unkind tone that was nevertheless undercut by a distinctly icy edge.

'Disrespect again?First you refuse to honour the code of conduct in the ring, and now you show your insolence yet again. You know, maybe you were too young to get into all this. You won't go far in this company with an attitude like that, I can freely tell you.'

Reno had laughed softly and brushed a hand through his comet-tail of hair, setting Rude's teeth on edge at that _attitude,_ moving softly towards the shadowed figure.

'I don't have a choice about that. I have to respect you, you're the boss, after all. I just don't know you that well. And what I don't know, I wanna…test. You know, "the best defence is a good offence", that kind of thing.' He had been rambling, Rude thought, perhaps covering for the fact that the truth of Tseng's statement had only just dawned on him.

'Hardly.' Came the calm reply 'it is that kind of thinking that lost you that match. And will continue to push you down,more than likelykill you.'

Reno had actually laughed at this. Rude's hand had moved halfway to his brow in exasperation. Here, he had thought crouching in perfect darkness behind a tangle of shadow-barred equipment, was someone who didn't know his place.

'I can't just wait for whoever I'm killing to get tired!'

It was a joke, it had to be. Rude had been able to see that, even if he had though it was misplaced. But Tseng…

'Then you shouldn't be here.' Tseng's voice had pitched down from its level tone. Reno had moved almost imperceivably, whipping his hand around in a flat arc faster than the snap of a bowstring. Tseng's arm had moved a fraction of a second too late to catch the hand, and it managed to clip him, which, Rude considered, was certainly something. Reno's voice had been hissed from behind clenched teeth and he didn't even try to break Tseng's hold on him;

'You recruited me. You got me here, you gave me a big freakin' bruise back there, and _now _you decide to tell me I'm not good enough to do what the dregs at the bottom of Three do for a couple of gil a go? If you don't like how I do things, that's too bad, if I'm wrong, I'll…recant when I get shot. Either way, if you really don't think I'm good enough, _you're _paying for my train ticket back under the plate.'

For once, Tseng had been without words.


	5. The Once and Future Partners

Chapter Five; The once and future partners

A soft knock on the door brought Rude round to the present again. Before he could say anything, Tseng had turned the handle of the grey door and had stepped smoothly inside. Immaculate as always, his eyes seemed to carry some trace emotion of sadness in them, possibly pity. It was hard to tell with Tseng. There was a long silence.

'Mako guns are so temperamental.'

Rude was surprised, this seemingly unconnected comment made no sense to him. Tseng put his head to one side at Rude's puzzled glance.

'His gun failed, I suppose? I cannot think of any other reason for this situation.' Oh, that was it. Still…he didn't know for sure, and he wasn't the type to make assumptions with no evidence. He shook his head.

'Not sure.'

Tseng stood at the foot of the bed. Once again, the simple nonentity of him made even Rude want to fill the silence with something. Anything, no matter how inane. Reno defied disinterest, but Tseng defied calculated comments.

'The doctors say the cuts'll heal. The blood loss is no problem' he pointed to an intravenous feed of crimson liquid hanging by a metal stand, a long tube snaked into a square covered with tape on Reno's forearm, he felt a little odd when he thought about it, 'but they don't know how long it'll take for him to wake up.'

That was the longest sentence he had said in at least a week.

'I don't see how they could. This kind of thing rather relies on the person.'

Tseng tapped his perfect fingernails on the white-painted bedstead. Rude rubbed a hand across the back of his neck idly.

'I hope you managed to retrieve the drive.'

It sounded so very inconsiderate, but Rude understood; Shinra waited for no man, and they expected near-instant results from their special operations units.

'I think so. Reno probably had it in his jacket. It's in the locker outside.'

Tseng nodded and disappeared from the room for a moment. He reappeared briefly, tucking something into his jacket; the computer drive, Rude supposed, and holding a gun by the barrel. He raised it in an explanatory gesture;

'I thought so. Out of power.'

That explained a lot.

Tseng placed the gun on the bedside table and moved towards the door.

'I'm sorry that I can't stay longer, but I have to return this to the executives. Do you want me to put you in for leave until he…?'

He left it hanging. Rude had never asked for anything from Shinra except for his pay before. And he still couldn't bring himself to ask for a holiday just for this. He was a Turk. He had to keep on going.

He shook his head and looked up at his leader, who nodded again and left the room as silently as he had come.

Rude sighed for what felt like the hundredth time this night, and tried not to look at the face, normally so mobile, so cocky and professional. Now so immobile, so calm, so dead-looking.

The slim fingers twitched. Reno shuffled his shoulders further up the bed and turned his head away from Rude, who almost laughed out loud. Damn good. Reno was always getting ahead of him, even when he was spark-out in a hospital bed; he still managed to surprise him. He rested his head in one hand again. He felt a stab of anger again. What kind of idiot runs off into terrorist territory alone? What kind of idiot lets him go?

There was a click, and the door admitted a person to the room for the second time. It was Lorraine. She looked at the pair for a while, apparently lost in thought. When she had finally regained control of her senses fully, she spoke to Rude in a very human tone, one that he had not often heard from any official.

'We've got a spare room in our "overnight section"' she smiled weakly at the internal joke. ' If you want to spend the night, that is.'

Rude nodded curtly and stood up, his knees clicking dryly.

Lorraine smiled understandingly again. Rude felt like such a burden, but he knew that the good doctor knew him well enough not to offer if she didn't want him around. She held the door open for him. She was shorter than him by far, shorter even than Reno. He felt like some kind of Summon as he followed her wordlessly through a set of swinging doors and two halls, through the break room, and into a long corridor lined with doors. She fitted a key into the lock, and turned to face the towering man. He looked nonplussed.

'You're very organised about this.' He put his hands behind his back.

'Well, it happens a lot. We get a lot of Turks down here, well, you know that - ' Rude nodded contemplatively 'and some of them are close, you know best friends, or girlfriend and boyfriend, boyfriend and boyfriend…"

Rude started, and waved his hands hurriedly;

'…It's, er, not like that…' No, very much not like that, especially not since the kid had decided to get very well aquainted with almost everyone on the company's payroll in every spare second he had. Not like that at all, thank you Lorraine.

Lorraine blushed, putting a hand over her mouth to hide a smirk, not believing him for a second. She'd always half-believed the rumours that flew around the city about the Turks' night-time activities anyway.

' Oh, god, I didn't mean…you know. I didn't mean it like that. But…we started keeping a couple of rooms spare, I mean, lots of them want to stay with their …partners, to make sure nothing happens.' Rude nodded. Being a Turk granted you a kind of natural insecurity. After all, paranoia was no oddity when death _really was_ potentially around every corner.

'Okay, good night then. If you need anything, just give me a call; I'm on the graveyard shift.'

After Lorraine had clicked her way through the doors, Rude let himself into the room and pocketed the key. He automatically checked the space, his brain too preoccupied to notice what his body was doing. The window was not overlooked by any other noticeable hiding place, the door was securely locked, and the adjacent bathroom was empty. He collapsed on the bed, still dressed, and stared through his sunglasses at the ceiling. He took them off lethargically and allowed his eyes to close.

He did not expect to dream. He never dreamed any more.

'_I had such a weird dream._'

Rude tried to speak, he knew that voice. A couple of notes higher, and from a distance that he was sure had made his legs jerk convulsively in his bed. For, and he laughed silently at the clear realisation, he was dreaming. He never dreamed. This was strange.

Again he tried to reply to the painfully familiar sentence, but his voice seemed to give up halfway and come out as a non-confirmatory grunt. He sounded mildly interested, just like him; not wanting to get too involved.

'_Aw, c'mon, you wanna know really._'

He felt his shoulder shrug against a hard, rustling surface. As he breathed in deeply, he smelt the earthy scent of good old Kalm grass. Recollection choked any words he had been about to say out of his throat. He remembered now. That holiday had only been four weeks ago, and he had been glad of it, even if he didn't know his skinny compatriot too well. He remembered. He was lying lazily and probably drunk in a thickly flowered field outside Kalm.

It was the most vivid dream…the most vivid memory… he had ever had. He could feel the sun warming his forehead, and was glad of the sunglasses, for once. He could feel the lush grass tickling his feet; or rather they would have been if he was at all ticklish, and he remembered that neither of them had been wearing any shoes, for some reason.

Reaching up to brush away a butterfly that had landed on his head, he felt his strangely bare elbow brush against unfamiliar skin, and felt the stubble of several days' neglect on his scalp at the same time as he turned his head to investigate. His hand froze on his darkened head as he saw a sight that he should have been prepared to see since he had recognised the familiar situation.

Reno, hair spread like a macabre halo around his face, glowing in the amber light in much the same way that it had when they had first met, was lying elbow-to-elbow with him. He frowned suddenly and pulled himself up by his stringy arms. Rude remembered the t-shirt that hung loosely off his shoulders. He had laughed for the first time in days when Reno had appeared in the car with it on. It was green, and carried a faded advert for 'Choco Bobby's bar + nightclub – "because the nights are cold".'

He looked down at himself; at the rough blue cargo trousers and the black shirt with a fake, and subtly insulting Shinra i.d. transfer of that brat Rufus' head superimposed on his corpulent father's body that he had received from the boy sitting next to him as a birthday present. He realised that Reno had spoken to him.

'_What?_'

His own voice sounded distant; filtered by time and memory loss. Reno rolled his eyes;

'_You're sure acting weird. I told you not to mix that Solian stuff with gin.'_

Rude groaned inwardly at the memory. He was no lightweight, but that fiendish drink had been the undoing of several lesser Shinra executives, and would probably explain his slow reaction time.

Reno let himself fall to the ground again, and lifted an arm lethargically, his raised index finger making a figure-of-eight in the clear, warm air.

'_Where was I?_'

He let his hand hang limp from the wrist for a moment, smiling in a serpentine way as the butterfly flitted from Rude's head to his limp fingers, creating a profile shot that Da Vinci would have mud-wrestled with Michelangelo to paint. Rude raised his voice in mockery of Reno's own sardonic tone;

'_You had "such a weird dream".' _

He thought he must have been getting control of his dream now, although he might have been mirroring his words of years ago. Reno's laugh snapped him back to the present…past…whatever.

'_Yeah. Heh. I dreamed that we were Turks, those fully-fledged hard guys you see sometimes in HQ. We were on the Gelinka. You know, that emergency research charter plane they're making? There was a load of broken equipment there. Oh, it had sunk, did I mention that?'_

Rude shook his head. Reno could climb vertical walls and kick his foot higher than his head, but he didn't really have a memory.

'_Anyway, it had sunk. We were talking about something, anyway, I was. You hardly said a thing. Just like now, huh?'_

Rude laughed shortly. He couldn't remember where this was leading, but he wanted it to last a while longer.

'_Well, there was something about a materia being in there, but we couldn't open the door, and…these guys showed up. Freakiest looking weirdoes I've ever seen.'_

He trailed off. Rude sat up, now more than mildly interested. They had left the field after this. Perhaps he could save the moment if he acted now? After all, it was only a dream; he should be able to alter it subconsciously, shouldn't he?

'_And?_'

Reno, shrugged.

'_And nothing. I woke up._'

Rude sighed. Typical of Reno, telling a pointless story. A cloud passed over the azure sky. Reno sat up, stretching his arms out in front of him, dangling a pair of trainers from their laces. He finally turned a half-lidded eye to Rude.

'_Think we'll be good Turks?_'

He shrugged. He knew it was going to end; so, why not go out on a high note?

'_Me, sure. But as for you…'_

Reno hit him with a shoe.

Rude's head jerked off the crumpled sheets, almost tearing his ear off as an earring caught on the thin sheets. He swung an arm over and checked his black watch. The illuminated dials told him it was six-thirty. In the morning.

He raised his arms and allowed himself to be pulled up by natural muscle reactions. He sat on the edge of the warm patch in the otherwise frigid bed as the smell of grass faded, and the sunlight's warmth melted into a dull, throbbing headache. He clicked his tongue in annoyance. Reno had all of the migraine pills in his jacket. Well, he supposed he could drop round. He chided himself for the rationalisation of a visit that would be understood by any bystander.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and replacing his shades on his bony nose, he fumbled impatiently for the keys in his pocket. He nearly dropped the clinking trinkets on the industrially made carpet, hooking them at the last minute with his little finger. Finally opening the gate to his deep-frozen prison, he clumped his way sleepily through the deserted break room, and passed a few orderlies wordlessly, noting with some detachment that three crash victims were even now being rushed to the emergency ward.

He pulled the locker door open by one of the ventilation slots and fumbled through the sad little heap of clothes inside. Hesitating now that his fingers could feel cold, stiff stains on the lined cloth, he steeled himself (which took little effort) and pulled a little grey box of pills from the inside pocket. He broke the tinfoil seal on one of the yellow capsules with a bitten fingernail and swallowed the thing dry.

Reno got migraines sometimes. He swore that they had become sentient, and were out to get him. Stakeouts were a favourite to bring black spots dancing before his eyes, and after a few messy accidents; as the headaches made him even more wildly moody, he had taken to carrying heavy-duty pills with him. It was his one noticeable weakness, aside from his vicious temper and wild rebellious streak.

There was a scraping noise from inside the room. Rude jumped, baseless hope mingling with a dual terror as he came to two conclusions at the same time; either Reno had make a frankly miraculous recovery, or those AVALANCE deviants had come to finish the job.


	6. Yin and Yang

Chapter Six; Yin and Yang

Elfe stood, poised, her sword waving in the slight breeze that rippled across the multi-hung watchtower. She rested her chilled hands on the rusty iron supports and crossed her legs idly, resting her weight on one foot to allow the cramp in her right leg to ease. A sentry passed her by unnoticed, fetching a silent sigh of relief from the young woman, who was used to being caught sneaking off duty early. She felt a slight apprehension as she descended the rickety wooden ladder down to ground level; events of an unusual magnitude must be starting to swing into place if Elfe was too busy planning to notice her shirking her duty. She shoved her hands in her pockets despondently and slouched off into the darkness. She never worried herself too much about this kind of thing. She was secure in the knowledge that her leaders knew what they were doing.

Anxious to pass from the chilling dark into the slightly warmer, slightly lighter (now that they had to rely on candle power until Fuhito came up with a backup plan) atmosphere of their HQ, she nearly knocked him head over heels as they both tried to fit into the door at the same time. She muttered a hurried apology and stepped back from the boarded-up doorframe. The dark-haired man picked his glasses up from where they had fallen in the dust. He turned them to shine in the pale moonlight, now giving way to the coming dawn, inspecting the round frames for scratches. Once he was satisfied, he replaced them on the bridge of his nose and flashed a pale smile at her, turned, and melted into the fading gloom.

The sentry frowned; Fuhito had never been out on late-night reconnaissance before, she mused. Things must be elevating to a severe point when they were sending the brainpower out to fight the good fight.

She breathed out, holding two fingers parallel to each other mid-air in a mock smoking action. Her breath, even though she was indoors, froze in a cloud of pearlescent steam in the cool created by the lack of power.

Snickering childishly, she clicked her way down the concrete corridors, swerving violently to avoid Sears, barrelling down the main passageway at break-neck speed.

Elfe was still. Quiet introspection was one of her strong points, and she often spent nights such as this fading one analysing her enemy for future reference.

So, the two unusual characters that she had encountered earlier were new players in this little game. Fine. All the more entertaining for her.

The unruly novice, for that was what he clearly was by his conduct, that she had accosted a few hours previously had been of little interest to her. His speed and dexterity was notable, and she would have to adopt a wilder fencing style to get the better of his dodges, but otherwise she calculated that he could easily be broken. The Turks used guns, and he moved like a man not used to using a materia-powered weapon correctly. But the other man had been interesting. From what little she could see of him in the dark that had been pooling the stairs, he had been of more than average height and build; the practical output of this being that he had seemed to crouch over the fallen boy like a guardian demon. She smiled in the gathering light of dawn at the memory of his face as he had desperately warned them off. She had seen terror before, but never outright anger so…concentrated. So intense as to make her respect the bearer of that passionate fury. Assuming the fleeting thief survived, she was sure that she would see the odd couple again, and she would feel a little remorse at their demise. Then let the game proper begin, and let as many of those slimy Turks join as they wanted. She would take them all out.

Doctor Nathaniel Divine stood statue-still, his hooded eyes gazing steadily at the grey-plastered wall opposite him. His ashen hand held a clipboard loosely, and his other rested on the handle of a trolley bearing unidentifiable tools and a plastic bag of carmine liquid. He moved suddenly, striding over to a bank of machinery, causing Rude to jerk the gun up quickly to avoid firing. Neither his face nor his voice showed any emotion as he spoke,

'I came in to replace your friend's drip feed. There is no need to be alarmed, please, put down the gun.' The clam, measured tone spoken in Divine's sepulchral tone inspired an instant distrust in Rude's sleep-addled mind, but he lowered the gun and returned it to its holster in slow, uncoordinated movements. Divine waited patiently, pulling a transparent tube from the figure's arm, until the gun was secured, whereupon he swung the trolley round dexterously and unhooked the empty plastic container from its hooked stand. Rude slumped over in an uncomfortable plastic chair until the operation had ceased, and Divine had returned the now empty trolley to a corner of the dismal room. The doctor leant against the wall next to Rude, creating a scene that would have had Edward Hopper slavering at the mouth to capture.

Something slowly clicked into place in Rude's dulled mind. He looked up blearily at the doctor next to him, his skinny form swamped in a rumpled white lab coat. Rude's jaw clicked as he spoke, and he was surprised at the dry rasping of his own barely recognisable voice;

'That's not a normal reaction to being threatened with a gun, you do realise that?'

Divine cast his disquieting eyes down to Rude's level, and spoke with a half-mocking sarcasm to his voice;

'Oh, really? Thank you for enlightening me about that particular fact, my life will be all the richer because of it.'

'Oh, abuse now, is it?' asked Rude, frankly glad to be having a coherent conversation, albeit an uneven and insulting one.

'Yes.' Replied the doctor in a flat, half-serious tone.

Rude sighed and sank down in the chair, resting his forehead on one hand, feeling his slow pulse throb through the train-track veins in the back of his hand. He fought to say something that wasn't obviously foolish or insulting.

'So…you must get a lot of hold-ups here then?' to be able to keep that calm, he thought, and especially in front of someone as imposing as him, though he said so himself. Divine smiled and folded his arms, his bony hands cradled in the swathes of alabaster fabric like thin, pale spiders clutched in some macabre swaddling. Rude shivered.

'Not an especially high number, no.' he paused, as if contemplating an almost implausibly humorous fact.

'I am not sure if I told you this before, but one tends to learn a certain…detachment…in an establishment such as yours. And this brings me to my point. Indeed no, Rude, we hardly have any attempted crimes since Shinra decided to place you here, but people do not develop suicidal tendencies from hold-ups.'

Rude nodded slowly, not fully comprehending where this high-tone narrative as heading.

' You know that, of course. But then so do I. It is one of the many things that one learns in operations such as SOLDIER. It is still a major point of practice for several of their more uncaring operatives, I believe.'

Rude stared blankly at the gently smiling face of the doctor. He knew that this was leading somewhere – but lacked the concentration to consider what that end might be. Slowly, lethargically, his mental gears clicked into place. He looked up,

'You were in SOLDIER?' He croaked, more astonished at the fact that he wasn't that astonished than anything else. Now he knew why the doctor made him feel uncomfortable. It was the eyes; those cold, glowing eyes. He reminded him of Sephiroth. That remarkable man. That terrifying man.

'Actually I thought your friend was, too.' Rude raised a quizzical brow, his eyes squinting, half with fatigue, half with the gloom.

'The eyes.' Divine explained, waving a long finger around his own cerulean eyes. 'Make him look as if he's been fairly dipped in Mako, but, I suppose he hasn't.'

Rude shook his head. 'Everyone seems to think that. I think he's just inbred.' His voice sounded dusty, the dry residue of the pills sticking to his throat as he spoke made him cough.

Divine laughed, shaking his head. God, he even laughed like Sephiroth.

'I'll leave you to it.' He smiled coldly, gliding out of the door. Rude could have sworn that his long black hair shimmered silver in the starlight.

He stood up, resting one hand on the machines humming softly beside the low bed, the low glow of healing material illuminating his partner's face sickly. He still felt angry. He still felt frightened.

_Is this what life is going to be like? Am I going to have to protect you all the time? Do I even mind doing that? Why do I always have to think so many things about you at the same time…you're my best friend. I hate you. I want to protect you. I wish you'd _learn_ to do your job. _

' No…that's something you know how to do, at least.' He murmured, unaware that he had spoken until a voice answered him.

'…Which one of my many talents are you referring to?' one bright azure eye gleamed up at him in the half-light. He jumped, startled, and straightened his tie. He allowed himself a slight smile.

The hospital lobby was less than gleaming, and had grown noticeably more dust-ridden in the three days Rude had been rushing in and out of it, torn between work and personal business. The potted plants that adorned its seating sections were frankly dead, but there was nowhere else to sit, even if said seats were depressingly grey and overstuffed. Reno's crutches lay haphazardly across the floor, skittering across each other as he kicked his feet at them.

' Why is the car not here yet?' he groaned. 'It's three o'clock, Rude. How much traffic can there be at this time of day?'

'Reno…' Rude sighed, exasperated, more tired than he had ever felt before.

'Yeah, yeah. I know. If I don't shut up you'll put your fist in my face.' The boy sighed sulkily, talkative after a week of sedation. 'You're just angry because you had to carry me in public.' His expression changed from sulk to smirk and he ducked his head so that Rude wouldn't see him sniggering. The latter's fingers twitched, and his normally immobile jaw tightened:

'Why did you run off by yourself?'

_Why do I care so much?_

'Well, I just thought I could do it fine myself. And…that it would save time if you were ready to go beforehand. Everyone's always telling me to be prepared, so what's the problem with doing a little strategy? With doing things myself?' Reno's thin fingers grasped at the foam-filled seat's sides, his face ill-tempered.

They put us into teams for a reason. Because we can't do everything alone.

'No problem.'

'Well the-' Reno started, suddenly livid.

'Except that you're a Turk, not a hero.' Rude interjected glumly, 'We're meant to be a team aren't we?' His voice was slow, a soft undercurrent of accusation twisting under it, willing him to lose his temper.

'That doesn't mean we have to be joined at the hip does it? You abandon me all the time. You don't see me having little heart-to-hearts every time you do something like that.'

You're like a child. Just like a child. I don't want to have to treat you like one. Why can't you just grow up?

'I've never done anything as…'

'Stupid?' The boy's tone was accusatory, self-mocking. Rude remained silent. Reno frowned petulantly.

'Yes you have.'

Rude shook his head and held up a hand. Reno crouched on his chair now, one finger waving in front of the other's face.

'No, you remember – listen to me! – you remember, you were the one who jumped off that train in sector 5, and you were the one who insisted on leaving me in the helicopter beforehand!'

Rude brushed Reno's hand away.

'I had to fly you to A and E for that." Reno grumbled, settling back into the grey seat of his chair.

I know. That's why I feel like this now. I was such an idiot then, I didn't think you'd be one too.

'But I didn't nearly kill myself for a computer drive.' Reno rolled his eyes:

' I got it, didn't I?' he snapped.

'That reminds me; they gave you that stick for a reason, you know. Why in hell didn'tyou try to fight those people?'

Reno glowered at him, his tone petulantly mocking, almost chanting the words as if he'd been told them enough times to memorise them,

'Because I'm a stupid bloody kid who can't think staright in a crisis. Happy?'

_I don't want this to happen again. I want you to learn this time. For once, just please, please, grow up, won't you?_

Rude remained silent, feeling that familiar tic of anger stirring within him. Reno put his hands behind his head and hissed between his teeth.

' I thought a professional always got the job done, no matter what. I thought that was the whole idea of the Turks.'

'Someone who sacrifices himself for his job isn't a professional. That's just a fool.' Rude spoke sullenly, with no hint of the welter of emotions that were only now settling back into his natural stoicism.

_Don't ever die. This job would be so very boring without you._

Reno glared at him, his teeth gritted in an absence of a snappy comeback. He slouched further down into the cheap padding of his lounge chair. He smiled suddenly, his eyes narrowed petulantly but amicably:

'I hate you.'

'I hate you too, partner.'


End file.
